


Your Dying

by StellarLibraryLady



Series: My Poetry Book [1]
Category: Original Work, Poetry - Fandom
Genre: Death - Poetry, Dying - Poetry, Friendship, Gen, Poetry, Poetry - Death, Poetry - Dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 14:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7805287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarLibraryLady/pseuds/StellarLibraryLady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The feelings of loss upon seeing an old friend in a care center, and the visitors realizing that memories can never be shared with the old friend again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Dying

**Author's Note:**

> My parents and I went to visit my grandmother who had recently been placed in a care center in a nearby town. We discovered that her roommate was a friend of ours from years gone by. Edna struggled to visit with us, but couldn't. It affected my parents and me a great deal to see such a hardworking and merry person to be in her present condition. Edna passed away a few days later, and we never saw her again.

Your Dying

We saw you dying there, old friend,

Lying in that strange, white bed,

So changed from the way we’d once known you.

The busy hands that were quick to help

And once reached out in sympathetic strength,

Now lay idle and gnarled upon your shrunken abdomen.

The mouth that once curved upward 

In the warmest smile of friendship,

Now dipped downward in bitterness and pain.

The merry eyes that once glistened 

With the very joy of living

Now stared dully at us in bewildered confusion,

The eyes of a stranger looking at other strangers.

 

That was what hurt us:

The fact you didn’t know us,

Or that we couldn’t share again the fun of long ago.

Seeing you, we realized that life for us was ebbing away, too,

As our generations gradually melted into the earth.

The world that day felt old and tired and colorless.

The sorrow for us who remain

Is that we have to look back at memories alone.

We know our time is passing, too,

And soon there will be none to remember any of us.

 

Perhaps what really hurt us the most

Was that for flashing moments you seemed to know us.

For an instant you stared at us with pleading eyes

As you struggled with an unwilling body to reach us.

And then you slipped back into your dying without speaking.

 

The strangeness of your unsmiling face sobered us,

And the cold reality of your dying will chill us forever.


End file.
